As a unique artist at the forefront of experimental photography, Garry Fabian Miller’s ‘camera-less’ photography expands the possibilities of the medium; working meticulously from his darkroom, Fabian Miller creates immersive, transcendent compositions that appear to glow and palpitate in place, captivating by their luminescence and rich chromatic values. By physically curating light through a variety of translucent materials and liquids, Fabian Miller’s crafted exposures attempt to capture both the aura and contemplative nature of an ancient and mythical natural landscape, as a living, breathing light, emanating its presence atop the paper’s surface.
Garry Fabian Miller was born in Bristol, England in 1957. Since the mid-1980s, he has used Dartmoor as inspiration, an ancient moorland in south Devon, known for a myriad of myths and legends of English folklore. Working from his darkroom in Dartmoor, Fabian Miller started producing photographs by passing light through diaphanous objects and liquids onto light-sensitive paper, pushing the chromatic potential of his materials while exploring both his meditations on the region’s ambiance and the vivid palette of nature.
Fabian Miller’s calculated exposures, lasting from thirty seconds to twenty hours, recall a painter’s grasp of craftsmanship. Fabian Miller effectively paints with light, mapping out the direction of light through cut-paper shapes and sketching studies for forms before exposure. The final photographs are often the result of multiple printings. In effect, Fabian Miller’s work rekindles the wonder and fascination of the pioneers of early chemical photography, capturing the magical allure of light.
Focusing his aesthetic towards an increasingly profound way to interpret energy within the elements, Fabian Miller’s evolution as a photographer is a beautiful, comprehensive path towards abstraction, resembling a clarity akin to Mondrian’s abstraction of painting. The photographer’s perambulatory process develops imagined visual forms that reflect on the sanctity of life with a contemplative and hopeful nature.
“I’m interested in that moment of peace which descends when someone is reading a book or observes flowers in a vase, and a certain quality of light comes into the room, some transcendent instant – and then it passes. I want to preserve a space for those special moments – the pictures are embodiments of them.” – Garry Fabian Miller
An original and inventive photographer, Garry Fabian’s Miller photographs are both meditative and based on observed phenomena. The photograph’s transfixing nature carry the potential to hold the viewer captive and create a space of contemplation and observation. An alchemist of light in the dark, Fabian Miller’s work reminds the viewer of the inherent joy of experiencing light and spirituality from within.
“What Fabian Miller seeks now is not so much redemption, but a heightened awareness of instants of beauty and peace that can provide human solace, resolution and meaning. These moments of calm centered meditation become more affecting because of their essential transience, each one has value. Cumulatively they make a life.” – Nigel Warburton, “Time and Light,” The Colour of Time, 2010
GARRY FABIAN MILLER: I LLUMINATIONS
JANUARY 26 – FEBRUARY 16, 2019
Holden Luntz Gallery
332 Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, FL 33480
